


cannot help but marvel at the beauty before my eyes

by blanchtt



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:20:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22310176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchtt/pseuds/blanchtt
Summary: If there’s one thing that makes worth taking up residence again in Greendale, it’s this, Zelda knows.She sits comfortably in the paisley chair in the parlor, the house quiet now, and cannot help but look down once more at Sabrina in her arms. At barely a month old, her niece has lost the squashed and upset look of a newborn, filling out to an adorable infant that, despite having fallen asleep in her arms long ago, Zelda can’t find in herself to take upstairs and put down to sleep in her own crib.
Relationships: Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith
Comments: 17
Kudos: 56





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A reimagining of CAOS and Madam Spellman.

*

If there’s one thing that makes worth taking up residence again in Greendale, it’s this, Zelda knows. 

She sits comfortably in the paisley chair in the parlor, the house quiet now, and cannot help but look down once more at Sabrina in her arms. At barely a month old, her niece has lost the squashed and upset look of a newborn, filling out to an adorable infant that, despite having fallen asleep in her arms long ago, Zelda can’t find in herself to take upstairs and put down to sleep in her own crib. 

There’s nothing but the tick of the old clock on the mantle, the crackle of the fire in the fireplace, and Hilda’s knitting needles clicking together, and on some other night she might find this stiflingly boring, fingers itching for a shovel or cigarette or a drink. But she needs Hilda here, unwilling to jeopardize in the slightest their niece’s wellbeing for a bit of fun, and she’d put her drinks away the day before for the length of Edward and Diana’s vacation and Sabrina’s stay with them, and her cigarettes along with them. 

And so, not particularly minding the disruption to her usual schedule, Zelda stares down at the babe in her arms, at the little nose and moue of her mouth, the fair lashes of her closed eyes and the wisps of downy hair that promises to be a lovely blonde, the little fists balled up and pressed to her cheeks. One might assume that after the delivery of the four hundredth birth that the miracle of life would lose some of its luster.

But she will never stop being amazed, Zelda knows, by dark newborn eyes and those tiny, perfect fingernails.She raises Sabrina, presses a kiss to the crown of her head, takes in that lovely, sweet, ephemeral scent of babies and knows she could do this all night. 

As if sensing that, there is a huff from the couch nearby.

“Do you think I—” Hilda says hopefully, her knitting pausing, and Zelda looks up at her, at her eager expression, and raises a brow.

“Not yet,” she says, shifts Sabrina in her arms just a hairsbreadth closer to herself, and Hilda rolls her eyes, shoulders slumping in disappointment.

“You’re going to have to put her down sometime,” Hilda mutters, just loud enough for Zelda to hear, and Zelda looks down her nose at her, though the look is lost on Hilda.

“You can hold her _then_.”

There is nothing but the annoyed _click click click_ of Hilda’s knitting needles in response, which Zelda ignores as she looks back down at Sabrina.

Another Spellman, destined to walk the Path of Night. She puts aside the knowledge of the thing that Edward made her bear witness too, twisting her arm with his logical reasoning, and burries that away like she’s done with Hilda in the yard countless time. She thinks instead with a shiver of pride and excitement through her that though their line may be small now, it is a long and illustrious one, and she and Edward and Hilda have much to teach Sabrina as she grows. Though she had found her brother’s choice of partner mortifying, at the very least Diana, a pleasant and knowledgeable enough woman for a mortal, is open-minded enough not to deny her daughter her birthright.

Her thoughts are interrupted by the jarring ring of the phone from the entryway of their home, loud enough so that Zelda purses her lips as she feels a twitch from Sabrina. 

“Hilda!” she hisses, and Hilda sets her knitting aside quickly, struggling up from the couch, and patters out of the parlor, the incessant ringing going silent, thank Satan, as Hilda finally picks up the receiver. 

“Spellman Sister Mortuary,” Zelda hears, and with that taken care of Zelda moves Sabrina in her arms just a bit, hushes soothingly as Sabrina stirs. At this hour likely nothing more than a grieving mortal which can be easily taken care of.

Tomorrow, when they’ve unpacked the bags her brother had left with them, they’ll get her properly dressed, Zelda decides. Not in this mortal nonsense, their niece in some sort of little white jumpsuit with a large smiling bear on the front of her chest. Satan in Hell. Sabrina will need a proper dress, Zelda thinks, smiles at the thought of a new wardrobe of miniscule clothing. Velvet and lace, stockings, and a cap to keep her head warm, of course—

“It’s Edward and Diana,” Hilda says, and the breathless tone of it has Zelda looking up with a start to find her sister in the parlor entry, unusually pale and clutching at the door jamb as if to stay upright.

“What?”

“Their plane,” Hilda says, and with _that_ the tears start to come, one and two and three and then Hilda is sinking to the hardwood floor and sobbing openly, and somehow Zelda finds she’s standing up, no memory of doing so, Sabrina squirming to wakefulness in her arms as if she, too, can feel the ice that’s just wound its way around Zelda’s heart.

“Their plane,” Zelda repeats disbelievingly. 

“Over Italy,” Hilda gets out between hiccuping sobs, wiping her tears on the sleeves of her sweater. To each her own way of dealing with grief, and young Ambrose sleeping in his attic room is too far away to hear. “And a few mortals with them, too. Faustus said it’s on their news.”

Sabrina moves in her arms unhappily, breathes in like she, too, is going to start crying, and this news, Zelda thinks, reeks of death not done right, of something rotting sweet and hidden and suspicious, her brother and his mortal wife far too important for it to have been an accident at this place and this time. 

“Did they say what caused it?” Zelda asks steadily, and from the look Hilda gives her, eyes narrowed and frowning, it must seem ghoulish even for her.

“I suppose we’ll know more in the morning,” Hilda replies, and getting her to talk seems to sober her. 

Out of all the planes flying to all the places on all the days, how unfortunate that the very one to go down is the one carrying their brother, their High Priest, and Sabrina’s father. And now there is a mewling newborn in her arms, her niece under their charge in a way neither of them would have ever anticipated, and Zelda takes the dark blossom of unwelcomed suspicion and pushes it down, for her and Hilda’s and, ultimately, for Sabrina’s sake. 

Zelda steps forward toward Hilda, kneels, the hardwood cold against her knees, down to Hilda’s level. She offers Sabrina to her carefully, makes sure that Sabrina’s carefully settled into Hilda’s arms before letting go, losing that little spot of warmth in her arms. It grounds Hilda, Zelda can see, and her sister’s tears have stopped for the moment, if only for Sabrina’s sake. She is the eldest and, when they’d needed it, stand-in mother to both Hilda and Edward, and has been so for a very long time. 

There is a list of things to do unfurling in her mind. A proper Satanic service for Edward, and something else for Diana, Diana who’d once said Edward and then Sabrina were the only family she had. There is what she’ll say to the coven and when, and beyond their private grief the disaster of the coven losing not only a precious member of their small numbers but their High Priest as well. 

But that’s for tomorrow, Zelda thinks, steadying herself and rising and pushing that all from her mind, because right now there is arranging the nursery they need if they’re to put Sabrina to sleep, and finding a steady source of milk for her to drink, and much more clothing than Edward had left with them, and baby-proofing a home against a new little witch.

“I’ll set up the spare room off the landing as a nursery,” Zelda says perfunctorily. There is already Sabrina’s spare crib there and a changing table, but it’d only meant to be temporary until her parents had come back from their vacation, lacking decor or comfort or personalization. “Bring her up when you can and we’ll tell Ambrose in the morning,” Zelda says, expects nothing less than for her words to be followed as she leaves the parlor. 

She reaches the foot of the stairs and steadies herself against the newel post, the click of her heels on the hardwood emphasizing somehow a physical void the home seems to manifest now, their niece’s visit no longer a joyous occasion, and in the privacy of their dimly lit hallway Zelda allows herself a single shuddering breath before raising a hand to her chest, steadying herself physically before ascending the staircase. 

*

Over the half-year, tragedy has healed over, smoothed over from wound to an almost-healed bruise.

But it is the kind of bruise, Zelda realizes from time to time, upon spotting the headstones as they round the corner of the house to go to the garden or when Sabrina outgrows the clothes Edward and Diana had bought her before their deaths, the kind that you forget is there until you touch it too hard, until she’s drinking wormwood tea or Helda’s brewing a familiar-smelling potion and thinks to herself _Edward used to drink wormwood tea and always kept something brewing in his kitchen_ , and then, _ah, yes,_ the bruise is there, just forgotten for a moment.

Sabrina, once she’s old enough, will surely have questions. What can she tell her? That they know nothing more of the circumstance than she ever will, that it had been decided by mortals and witches alike that the disaster had truly been an accident. That their brother, her father, was a brilliant and charming warlock, a renegade, a forward thinker. Of their mother she knows hardly anything, and that, for a girl, may be hardest to bear. 

But, tragedy notwithstanding, by and large her life has changed for the better, though Zelda would admit it to no one, not even under the strongest of tortures. 

Sabrina’s chubby little hand clutches at her index finger with surprising strength, baby nails pricking at her skin, other hand grasping at the edge of the couch, and Zelda, half crouched to accommodate Sabrina’s miniscule height, watches as her niece thoughtfully, carefully plunks one foot in front of the other, slowly marching, little brows furrowed in concentration, follows along to hold her steady. 

“What a clever girl,” Zelda says in praise, eliciting a toothless smile from their niece, and there’s the mechanical click and whir of Hilda taking a photo with her camera from behind them.

It hurts when she thinks about it for too long, when Hilda takes the developed Polaroid of Sabrina and hands it to her to look at, all of ten months old, and Zelda sees it like a mirror—Edward’s features, like a copy of his own baby photos. There is also probably some of Diana in Sabrina, too, but she’d only met the woman something like twice and can hardly speak on her behalf.

“She’s coming along, isn’t she?” Hilda says proudly, a midwife too and keen to track Sabrina’s progress, camera hanging around her neck and taking back the photo Zelda hands back, and at that Zelda nods in agreement, could not agree more with her sister’s evaluation.

“Before you know it, we’ll be fending off stray familiars and putting out fires,” Zelda says, watches as Sabrina wobbles on her feet before her little legs give out. Zelda follows her, holds her hand as she plunks down onto the rug on her rear. But it’s cushioned by her diaper and there’s no crying. There hardly ever is, from Sabrina. She sits for a moment as if in thought, and then lets go of Zelda’s finger, choosing instead to crawl forward toward whatever has captured his interest with a squeal. “Literally.” 

But despite the trouble it may bring them Zelda says it with a smile, because the manifestation of a witch’s powers, cognizant of the action are not, are always something to celebrate. With no pregnancies in the coven since Diana’s, the addition of Sabrina to the coven had been the most recent.

“Another one to add to the album,” Hilda says cheerfully, and Zelda takes a seat on the sette as Hilda toddles off, no doubt looking for the photo album she keeps of a growing Sabrina to secure the Polaroid in.

For certain, Faustus is three steps backwards from Edward’s direction of the coven, and there is no more gallivanting around Europe at the drop of a hat. There is no chance, other than newspapers she has delivered, to practice Russian, French, Hebrew, Mandarin, or Basque. And at times she smokes through a pack of cigarettes all at once, smoke curling off her like a dying Sabbath pyre, out on the porch away from where it may reach tender lungs and where Hilda pretends not to notice.

Sabrina grabs the legs of the coffee table, hauls herself up uncertainty, and there is their grimoire on the table that she’d consulted last night that should not be handled roughly by little searching hands, and so at that Zelda stands, walks over and leans down, places her hands under Sabrina’s arms and lifts, settles her on her cocked hip like she was born to do it.

  
There are still bruises, yes. But their home is no longer draped in a sad and somber mood, and the garden outside blooms with Hilda’s vegetables, and her heart catches in her throat when Sabrina clutches at the lapel of her dress and tugs, bables something that sounds like it may one day clarify into _auntie_ , and in the end that must count for something, mustn’t it?

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

Another Feast of Feasts goes by, their family overlooked once more and another witch chosen for the honor.

But now, with a gregarious fourteen-month-old loudly open and shutting kitchen drawers underfoot with a cheeky smile as Hilda cleans up dinner and Ambrose loiters and Zelda takes her tea, she can’t say she’s sorry for the missed opportunity. 

It is one of Faustus’ directives, a focus on the old ways to strengthen the coven. But she’s never been able to partake of it, not in the way others do. A drop of blood, perhaps, not to appear gauche and unpious. But from time to time the Queen of the Feast is a babe she’s delivered, a young witch she’s brought into the word so few years ago in comparison to how many are left to live, and those Feasts not even blood passes her lips. And were it to be herself one year, with a young child to look after, or Saran forbid, even Sabrina herself?

Her dark thoughts are interrupted by the sudden ringing of the doorbell, and she glances at Hilda, puts down her teacup. “Are we expecting anyone?” 

“No,” Hilda replies with a shake of her head, drying her hands on the lap of her apron. “There’s nothing on the mortuary schedule until Mr. Hudson’s funeral on Thursday morning.”

“Shall I get it, Aunties?” Ambrose asks from the kitchen chair he’s reclined deeply in, balancing on its two back legs and with one food on the ground, and Zelda shakes her head, resists the urge to tell him to sit up straight before he falls back and cracks his skull.

“Watch Sabrina, will you?” Zelda asks with a wave of her hand at their niece, who is currently engaged in gnawing on a pilfered spoon, and Zelda pushes back her chair, rises, and walks towards the front door, draws her deep indigo-colored robe more tightly around herself and securing the sash around her waist to hold it closed.

She opens the front door to the chill and darkness of an autumn night, to a full moon half-hidden behind dark clouds and an unfamiliar face—a witch, Zelda can tell, though she’s not seen her amongst their coven. 

It’s not hard to sense who’s mortal and who’s not, even when their kind deign to dress like them and live among them. Mortal lives pass like mayflies before them, a bright rush of passion before burning out, short-lived. In contrast, from this witch on the front steps of their home emanates a deep and silent undercurrent of power belied by her carefully curled hair and finely-done eyeliner, her expensive-looking and well-fitting dress and her high stiletto heels.

“Good evening,” Zelda says measuredly, crossing her arms against the chill. “What can I help you with?”

“Good evening,” the other witch replies, smiling disarmingly with a tilt of her head, though her next words put Zelda instantly on edge. “You’re Zelda Spellman, aren’t you?”

She’s not lived this long by being a fool. The thought that some witch outside of their coven, a witch that knows her but that _she_ doesn’t know—and the lack of control there both vexes and frightens her—has Zelda calling deep within herself to Hilda back inside the kitchen, a subconscious tug at her sister’s aura in case Ambrose and Sabrina should need protection.

“What do you want?” Zelda demands, a hex ready on the back of her tongue and the tip of her fingers, ready to block the door to the ancestral Spellman home with her last breath. But this witch, as if only suddenly realizing how maladroit her entrance is, is the sudden picture of remorse.

“I was a follower of your brother,” the woman explains, and Zelda must resist wrinkling her nose in distaste at such a blatant act. While that may be true, surely the other witch can’t think that reason is enough to show up on their doorstep well past conventional social hours. “And I’m sure this will come as a surprise for you,” the other witch continues. “But Edward charged me with keeping an eye on his only daughter, and, well, here I am.” There’s a pause, as if gauging Zelda’s reaction, before the woman asks, “May I come in?”

It is at face value absolutely absurd. But Zelda relents, unclenches her fist and feels the hardness slip from her tense muscles, only because the other witch withdraws something from where she’s been holding it casually, unnoticed behind her back—an unusually large black rabbit, neck broken, and a bundle of herbs tied together with twine.

Skullcap, nettle, calendula, cohosh root and witch hazel bark. It’s old, old magic, and women’s magic, something she offers to the women in the coven after birth to stop the bloodflow, ease cramps, bring on milk, and she’s not Sabrina’s birth mother but the intention of the gift is clear, and something in her gut has her step aside, has Zelda nod and hold the door open for the other witch.

Zelda brings her into the kitchen, finds Hilda and Ambrose and Sabrina gone, and sweeps her robe around her, takes a seat at the table. It is a blatant move on her part not to offer the other woman a seat, and Zelda watches as the other witch looks around shamelessly, taking in their kitchen like a curious magpie before she places the gifts on a counter and then leans back against it.

“You know my name,” Zelda says, in a tone that demands an answer.

“How rude of me,” the other witch says, smiling and sounding anything but repentant. “I’m Mary Wardwell. I teach at the mortal school. Baxter High?”

The name brings an acrid taste to Zelda’s mouth—the name of the school that Hilda is certainly bound to push for Sabrina to attend because of Sabrina’s duality, but also the woman’s. The people who’ve taken her for a fool are few and far between, and most of them six feet under now. _Mary_ isn’t even a witch’s name.

“Mary Wardwell,” Zelda repeats, and every part of her aches for a cigarette right now. “I don’t believe it.”

“Why, whatever do you mean?” the other witch asks, blue eyes wide, and Zelda finds she is quickly growing tired of this sickly-sweet voice now, of the other woman playing coy and tilting her hair just so, rich curls falling over a shoulder.

“Who are you?” Zelda demands, and there’s a pause before Mary moves.

With just a step forward, the schoolmarm act is dropped. With the intensity and fluid grace of some large and dangerous cat, the other woman pushes away from the counter and saunters slowly forward, stops when she settles her hands on the back of a chair. 

“The truth?” Mary Wardwell repeats, and Zelda narrows her eyes.

“All of it.”

Mary smiles again, and turns just a quarter suddenly, motions at the black rabbit laying on the counter with her right hand. “May I?”

Zelda tilts her head just enough for it to pass as an affirmation, and Mary turns, opens one drawer and then the other as she rummages around until she finds a knife. From her seat Zelda watches as Mary holds the rabbit’s ears, baring the throat, and slides the knife’s tip from just under the chin down in a smooth motion to between its leg, guts it cleanly and sets the entrails aside to be washed and begins to dress it. 

“My name is Lilith.”

From one extreme to the other, from the name of the False God’s mother to that of a goddess, a demoness—a name no ordinary witch would dare take lightly, and suddenly that uncurrent, that potential to tap into something far greater than she can comprehend, dawns on her. 

“Mother of Demons,” Zelda breathes, almost can’t believe the blessing their home has just been bestowed with. 

“No matter. You couldn’t have known. And don’t bother kneeling,” Lilith says, looking over her shoulder and smiling before turning back to the rabbit. “Your brother made a deal with me,” she explains. “The details of how that came to be are between he and I. In any case, I promised him one thing.”

The thought, the thought that she pushed down and away a year and a half ago comes back, a sinking feeling Zelda cannot ignore, that something about Edward and Diana’s death was not right. “Why would he strike a deal with a demoness?” Zelda asks, though part of her already knows why, and her voice wavers at the insinuation. “Why would he not trust the Dark Lord?”

“That, I cannot answer,” Lilith says. Zelda watches as she sets aside the cleaned rabbit which she has made quick work of, puts down the knife, and moves to the kitchen sink, rinses her hands of black blood first one and then the other, and dries them on a nearby towel before turning around. 

Lilith walks over again, except now takes a seat at the chair nearest her, and holds out to her the rabbit’s back paw—black-furred and cut off at the joint, downy-soft except for the sharp digging claws. It’s for a newborn, a charm to be fashioned for luck, though Sabrina’s past that stage. 

_Old magic._

“Will you let me help Sabrina?” Lilith asks, and it is not unlike Edward to do something so rash, so pig-headed, and all without telling either Hilda or herself, just like he’d sprung his marriage to Diana on them. And so far the demoness has proven that she means no harm, hasn’t smashed down the front door and ripped out her throat and stolen Sabrina away. 

If her brother’s death was no accident, then what better help could she summon herself to guard and prepare her niece to walk the Path of Night unharmed than that of the Mother of Demons?

“I must discuss it with my sister,” Zelda says as she accepts the black rabbit’s foot, and Lilith smiles.

*

There has never been, Zelda is sure, a happier and more well-loved child in their coven.

There is Hilda who cooks and loves and heals, magicks clean nappies out of thin air and knows the ancient nursery rhymes Zelda herself doesn’t even know and takes Sabrina out to the garden, plays hide and seek amongst the overgrown cabbages and turnips with her and whispers the words for Sabrina to learn that makes things grow.

There is Ambrose who spirits her away for adventures, climbing to the roof of their home with Sabrina on his back to show her the treetops of the Greendale forest from afar or lets Sabrina stand on his feet as he walks around the ancient home, holds her hands and takes huge steps to the giggles of his cousin, and who lets her stay up far later then he should as they watch terrible mortal movies on his ancient, flickering black-and-white television set.

And there is Lilith alongside herself who teaches her, at least when Lilith is not at the mortal school. 

At two years Sabrina’s eyes follow them, simple tasks down pat. The latent magic potential is there in infants and young children, growing relatively stronger with age—always to be nurtured, never suppressed—until the confirmation, the full receipt of power at their Dark Baptism.

And so Lilith sits on their parlor floor, on the old Turkish carpet that she’d brought back from Cappadocia, with her legs tucked demurely under herself and her skirt slipping just over her knees, Sabrina in her green corduroy coveralls courtesy of Hilda sitting in front of her. 

She observes that Lilith is dressed to the nines as usual, the dress sleek and brocaded, with an almost Eastern pattern to it, and heels to match the class of it. Her thick dark hair veritably cascades over her shoulder, and there is her red, red lipstick and simple winged eyeliner, the lines of both sharper than broken glass. 

Lilith’s words break her from her trance, and Zelda turns away, to not be caught staring.

In one hand Lilith holds a thick and well-used candle, to be moved out of range of small grabbing hands if need be, and with her free hand she cups her palm over the candle just out of reach of the flame. 

“If you focus,” Lilith instructs Sabrina, and Zelda observes the lesson, drink in hand. “If you focus, Sabrina, you can make the flame go out.” 

And Lilith demonstrates, hardly has to move or say a word with the power of her magic for the candle’s flame to flick out, Sabrina’s face showing clear surprise at the sudden lack of fire. But just as soon as the candle is out, Lilith smiles, and the wick flickers and alights and burns again, flame dancing as Sabrina leans forward. 

“Try it, darling,” Lilith says, and offers the candle.

Sabrina holds out her little hands, reaches for the candle but knows enough not to touch it, and furrows her brows in concentration. While Lilith has done performed spellwork that has made Zelda wonder what depths her skill can truly plumb, this is a simple enough task, needing no Latin or motions or hardly even a coherent thought for a full-grown witch. But at two, under Sabrina’s hand the flame flickers but does not go out, but for one so young it’s a strong sign. 

“You’re a bright little witch, aren’t you?” Lilith says, obviously pleased if the use of her baby voice is any indication, and reaches out, lets the tip of a finger of her free hand tap lightly at the end of Sabrina’s nose as she holds the lit candle out of reach once again, and as Zelda takes a drink she ruminates on how it is a strange thing to entrust another to hold Sabrina, but also to begin to know the Mother of Demons. 

In the rare moments when Sabrina is asleep or entertained by someone else, of all people Lilith seems to gravitate to her the most. She had assumed it fitting in the beginning. Though her sister has power enough to match her should they ever go toe to toe, Hilda’s magic is of a different kind, and it had seemed only natural that Lilith, whose magic had seemed of a more obscure nature would find kindship with herself first and foremost.

And somehow not only kinship. She had wondered, known from ancient texts that it wasn’t so, but had wondered still if the looks from the demoness that seemed directed at her held any potential for something sinister. Heavy-eyed glances, a lingering too close within her personal space. Lilith had hardly been sly about it.

But there is truth to the name of Mother of Demons, and Zelda had kept a vice-like grip over the thoughts Lilith stirred within her. Lilith holds Sabrina as carefully as she or Hilda or Ambrose does, delights in making Sabrina laugh by levitating her teddy bear or calms a temper tantrum with a sweet from behind her back. And now, bored with the unlit candle, Sabrina lurches forward, reaches for Lilith’s necklace, a catchy string pearls to a young eye. But Lilith catches her hand, redirects her gently, and sweeps Sabrina easily into her lap. 

“Your brother was certainly a free thinker,” Lilith says, baby voice gone and changing the topic of conversation quite suddenly to one more geared toward adults as she hands the candle, now out, to Sabrina to play with and turn over in her hands and keep her occupied. 

“Yes, and look where that got him,” Zelda says, and the retort gets an amused exhalation of breath from Lilith. Not a laugh, but close.

“Surely you’ve entertained the thought of taking up his mantle,” Lilith continues shockingly, gaze steady as she says it, nothing about it the last bit shameful. 

“Blasphemy,” Zelda says automatically, fingers curling around her drink. “Faustus is High Priest.”

“And how _engaging_ services are for it,” Lilith drawls with a secret, a knowing look between the two of them before bowing forward and tickling Sabrina’s tummy with both hands as the toddler squirms in her lap, tiring of the candle. “Wouldn’t you agree, little spider?”

At that break Zelda focuses on the tumbler in her hands, pretends to inspect it with a downward glance. 

She is not one to back down from anything, but it is almost unnerving to be on the receiving end of Lilith’s sultry glances.

Male attention is easy—simple, even. But from women? Is it attention or _attention_? And at each Dark Sabbath, despite who she speaks and socializes with before service, her gaze finds and settles on Lilith almost unwittingly in the crowd, the sermon now difficult to sit through, sermons about subservience and sacrifice that feel totally disconnected from the life she is currently _enjoying_. Where she’d once found unshakable truth she now questions, if not for her sake then for Edward’s and Sabrina’s.

There have been many women in her past, at many different points in her life, in history. But that hapiness had been too distracting, to all-consuming, to difficult to maintain amidst work and and the Dark Lord’s ways. 

How differently things could have gone, she thinks sometimes at night, though not often beacuse what’s done is done. But sometimes, on a particualry full moon or an auspicious date, she thinks back to lying in soft arms or on a warm breast and wonders if a multiplicity of lovers were not the rule amongst them. 

And so she’d dedicated herself to the craft, largely put orgies behind herself, and now Zelda lets a lock of copper hair fall from back behind her ear to over her face as she contemplates pouring herself another few fingers, though she knows that would do nothing except fuel the emotions she would prefer to keep at bay and the heat that smolders low in her stomach. But no matter the message from Lilith or what she has sworn to forgoe, there is Sabrina to focus on now.

“Come along, my little spitfire,” Zelda announces, putting her drink down on a side table and standing. She steps forward and leans close to Lilith, in her space as she scoops Sabrina up, and turns away with Sabrina on her hip, candle dropping to the floor with a thump that no doubt means the wax has dented.

But it has been so long and so she cannot deny an interested woman outright, particularly Lilith, beautiful powerful Lilith, Zelda realizes with a sinking feeling, and as she takes a few steps away Zelda stops and asks after a sigh, “Will you be staying for dinner again?” It has become their habit, the demoness an often-welcomed guest at their table. 

There is no answer save the subtle sounds of Lilith rising, of the lightest of sounds of her heels on the floor, and then there is warmth and softness at her back, the familiar, supple body and motions of a woman with unpure thoughts on her mind, a hand hot on her hip and Lilith whispering in her ear, a dark curl brushing against her cheek.

“If you’ll have me,” Lilith says, and Zelda can almost see the disarming schoolteacher smile on her face that does little to allay the lovely wickedness of her words. Lilith steps away, and Zelda breathes in, clutches Sabrina tighter as if that will make up for what now is lacking. “Wouldn’t dream of missing it.”

And so Zelda walks away, to the kitchen and then the sink to Sabrina wash her hands for dinner, knows that afterwards at bath time she or Hilda, whoever’s turn it is, will be cleaning whatever is to be served out of Sabrina’s blonde hair _and_ corduroys because she is the age where half of the food on her plate does not end up in her mouth. 

And so their small family of four becomes five more nights than not, Hilda more than happy to cook for one more person and Ambrose hanging on Lilith’s every word, eager to learn some new and occult magic he shouldn’t be practicing. 

  
And as for herself, it is not hard to let Lilith into her home despite her initial misgivings, because there is _Ambrose_ and _Auntie Hilda_ and _Auntie Zee_ , of course, and one Sabbath night as they eat together there is even _Auntie Lilith_ , and it is then, really, watching Lilith smile in a way she hasn’t before, light blue eyes brimming with a telltale shine, that Zelda knows truly that no harm will ever come to Sabrina by the Mother of Demons’ hand.

*


	3. Chapter 3

*

“Going into town,” Hilda says quickly, and gets her purse and coat ready to go before slipping out the door.

“Be up on the roof,” Ambrose adds, and then he too is gone and what is left is Zelda standing in the remnants of their parlor. 

Dramatics, perhaps, but it is a strange thing to see their home littered with Sabrina’s toys, both mortal and witching, a mixture of spellbooks and primer for babes and toy spiders, of brightly-colored building blocks and and an incredibly irritating invention called Legos. In contrast, when she’d come back to Greendale just before the outbreak of war Ambrose had already been a young man and contained all his paraphernalia to his room. 

She has no heart to pick any of it up right now and so Zelda sidesteps a stuffed crow, moves it aside with one heeled foot, and with Hilda out, Ambrose seeking refuge on the roof, and Sabrina finally, mercifully down for a nap, Zelda collapses on the couch, reaches for the packet of cigarettes and magicks a flame to light it. 

About ten glorious minutes of silence pass, in which she smokes seven cigarettes out of a mixture of stress and pleasure and then decides to break out the liquor. 

She rises, walks to the liquor cabinet and is in the process of uncapping the bottle when there is a subtle knock on the front door. Zelda praises Satan that whoever it is has the sense not to have rung the doorbell, and murmurs a spell that unlocks the door without moving.

“Come in,” she calls, loud enough to be heard but not enough to wake Sabrina upstairs, because not unless the hounds of hell themselves are at her heels can she be moved to do anything other than pour herself a particularly aged whiskey at this moment. 

The burn of alcohol warms her throat as she turns to greet whoever it is, as Lilith appears in the doorway of the parlor. The demoness is shockingly silent, likely taking in the tableau and, perhaps, the four fingers of whiskey currently in her glass. Lilith’s hand slips up the door jamb, weight on it and hip cocked, and her words are practically a drawl. 

“My, my. Someone’s tense.”

It is the understatement of the century today, which has been particularly hard for no apparent reason. But such is the fey and fickle nature of two-year-olds. The statement from the other woman is followed by a spell on Lilith’s lips, something she’ll have to ask Lilith or Hilda to repeat to her because the toys and books and everything that Sabrina’s upset in her meltdown flick back to their proper place in the blink of an eye.

“Praise Satan,” Zelda says, nodding an acknowledgement of her thanks. She withdraws another glass from the liquor cabinet and pours another drink, walks across the parlor and hands it to Lilith before turning and taking a seat on the couch once more. “They don’t call them the terrible twos for nothing, and we’ve got eight months of them left,” Zelda says, bracing herself before taking a large drink. 

Lilith walks over, settles next to her and raises the tumbler to her lips before speaking. 

“You know, Zelda, that if you need more of a hand I am available,” the other woman offers, and Zelda is treated to another knowing, askance look from Lilith. “The idea of a nuclear family is patriarchal drivel, after all. It takes a coven to raise a child.”

It is true, and Edward for whatever reason has chosen this witch to be of help to them. But there is only so much charity she can let herself accept. Is it not her solemn duty as Sabrina’s blood to take care of her herself? Does accept Lilith’s hand not show that she cannot handle it herself? That she is weak?

But another part of her, the very tired part of her, knows she should be taking Lilith’s offer seriously because she’s learning one need leave their children with someone else for a night or two to retain one’s sanity. 

Lilith sets down her tumbler and shifts as if to speak, crosses her ankles--always in a lovely pair of heels, Zelda thinks absently. 

  
  


And it has been so long, so long since she’s last reached pleasure other another’s hand and since Lilith has come into their lives with her dangerous sway and carnal gaze and felt like a woman more than a mother, that Zelda follows the curve of her calf, up to the hem of the edge of her simple but elegant black dress, and wonders what it would be like to slide her hand underneath it, to work Lilith to heights of pleasure and hear her name gasped in a way she’s only dreamed of on nights where Hilda is away?

Or, possibly, it would not be her hand up Lilith’s dress but Lilith’s up her. She has come to know Lilith as Lilith, as herself, not as a myth of the false god or canon of theirs or a story told to children to get them to behave, and the way the other woman slinks through their home, prowls beside her when she is not occupied with Sabrina gives hint to what could be. 

Coming back to herself and what Lilith has offered, there is the very simple fact that she is loathe to ask for help for anything, ever, let alone a family matter. Always has been. And when Sabrina isn’t screaming her lungs out and flinging toys to the six directions like a hellion, she is, after all, her darling niece that has a tighter hold on her heart that anyone could possibly imagine. As much as today has given her the beginning of a headache and a thirst for whiskey, she loves her too much to send Sabrina away to anyone else’s home, even for a night.

“Perhaps,” Zelda says finally, if only to put an end to the conversation, and turns the tumbler in her hand thoughtfully though she forgoes another sip. It is perhaps too much should Sabrina wake up and need her attention.

“‘Perhaps’?” Lilith repeats with a thoughtful hum. 

Why she thinks the other witch would leave it at that is beyond her. 

Lilith’s tumbler is left on a table, and the other woman is closer now, turned toward her on the couch, and the curious scent of burnt amber, that she has taken in on an accidental breath when the other woman is close enough, is there once again, lovely enough that Zelda closes her eyes as a hand comes to rest on Zelda’s knee, hot given her lack of silk tights as a barrier between them. 

“Or if it’s not that sort of _help_ you need, Zelda,” Lilith purrs, words quiet and meant only for her as Lilith squeezes gently. “I’d be happy to provide that as well.”

“Lilith,” Zelda says. It is a strange sort of torture to feel such a disconnect betwen spirit and body—spirit turning away and body aching to arch forward. Despite the first petal of slickness she feels between her thighs, she tries to speak a falsehood that the Mother of Demons probably sees right through.

Sharing a room with Hilda had been fine when she’s been unsure of her place, unsure if she’d stay, half-torn at the thought of leaving Europe behind for now and moving onto some other exotic, tantalizing location. Beunos Aires, Shanghai, Kuala Lampu--all had called to her. But a year ago, with Sabrina well and truly settled with them and flights of fancy but to bed, she had moved out, cited her need for her _own_ space.

She’d chosen a spare room in the east wing of the house, and at night, half-wondering if her supplications reached Lilith’s ears she’d prayed to her long and fervently, fingers slick and thighs trembling by the end of it. There was a face to her goddess now, and a beautiful one at that. 

She’s said nothing on the matter of it because to behold Lilith is to behold sex, to behold the fertility and awe of creation. There is nothing Lilith does not wear that does not turn heads, nothing that Lilith says that does not come with a tilt of seduction, nothing Lilith touches that does not bloom because of her. How does one honor an unholy force with mere words and actions?It had all gotten away from her in a way she’d never admit, Zelda knows. She would be a fool, after all her tangling, after knowing better, to fall for a demoness like some naive young witch.

And yet alone in her bed still she closes her eyes and lets her hands cup her breasts or dip between her thighs, dreams of fair skin and dark curls and of Lilith behind her or over her or next to her, lapping and touching and filling her, and wakes wet like she’s sixteen again.

In the silence left between them Lilith shifts, and there are hands pressed to the couch on either sides of her hips as Lilith slides down her body in a way that Zelda’s dreamt of but never dared breath. The other witch kneels before her, not in supplication but so that the hands slide from the couch to her thighs and come to rest on her knees, and her blood-red lips, for all of their vibrant color, are turned up in a gentle smile.

“Does the Dark Lord not tell us to take what we want? What we _need_?” Lilith asks sincerely, and Zelda takes in a breath, nods slowly because Lilith’s words are true, doctrine pulled from their own unholy bible. “You, Zelda Spellman, along with your sister, are a devoted mother,” Lilith continues, leaning in just a shade closer, and now there are fingers under her chin, tilting her head softly until she meets Lilith’s bright blue eyes, at which point the hand retreat—a request, not an order, and nothing, nothing, Zelda thinks can stop that little flutter of hope in her chest now. “Remember that to bring forth children it is nature to first partake in the pleasures of the flesh. The false god’s virgin mother is a perverted myth.”

“Yes,” Zelda agrees, more strongly this time, and Lilith’s hand is warm on her thigh now, no longer quite on her knee, and her thumb slips slowly under the hem of her own navy dress. 

“Can I taste you?” Lilith asks demurely, gaze held from under her long dark lashes, and despite the pretty words it might as well be _can I devour you_ because the look in Lilith’s eyes belies the coy posture, the sensuous pout. Lilith means to eat her up, Zelda sees, and as the last shreds of her will tatter she would gladly let her. 

She’d forsaken Lupercalia this year, watched Sabrina and the few other witch and warlock children of the coven, let Hilda and Ambrose and the other members of the coven partake. And that part of her, since Sabrina has come to live with them like a fire banked to embers for so long and now raised back up, flares within her, though she sinks her nails deep on the last tenuous hold on her self-control.

“If this is a game, I can’t, Lilith,” Zelda whispers, meeting her eyes, because she has seen that Lilith will not harm Sabrina but who is to say the same for herself? She cannot offer up her heart to be broken yet again and come back as strong as before. It’s something she’s confided in no one except Hilda on nights when drink loosens both their tongues. “I can’t.”

“My sweet Zelda. You must know by now that I don’t play with my food,” Lilith assures her, wearing that terrible, teasing smile of hers, and to unholy hell with it all.

Zelda lays her hand atop of Lilith’s and drags it higher up into her dress, between her thighs which she parts eagerly, gasps in pleasure as Lilith’s fingers find their place with delicious ease. Lilith has done with before clearly, but unlike mortal romance a skilled partner is something to thank the dark lord for. 

One hand pushes her dress higher, up around her hips, and the other plays along her folds, along damp silk.

“‘Perhaps’,” Lilith repeats, almost mocking, and nimble fingers tug the gusset of her undergarments aside. Zelda spares a thought to the couch but it doesn't last long as Lilith bows her head, licks up the length of her cunt before wrapping her lips around her clitoris and suckling, and that noise around them filling the parlor is _herself_ , Zelda realizes—a keening, wanton symphony punctuated by Lilith’s occasional hard breaths, by the wet and messy sounds of Lilith at the apex of her thighs.

She comes in almost no time at all, no time at all to take in and appreciate Lilith’s fingers stroking inside her, her fiendish tongue and her skillful lips. Pleasure comes in a wave that bears Zelda so hard and quick to orgasm that it leaves her ears ringing, body going limp and struggling to hold herself upright on the couch when she comes back to herself, cunt throbbing. 

There is nothing left of coherent thought, reduced simply to a thing that whimpers with the disappointment of loss as Lilith withdraws her fingers and, then, in a show meant for her Zelda is sure, places them in her mouth with her own moan, with her own fluttering of eyelashes and closed eyes. And at the sight of that her cunt twitches, pleasure almost coming on the heels of her orgasm though it ebbs away before she can grasp at it, make it truly hers. No matter.

“Lilith,” she says, surprisingly breathless as she holds herself up, props hersel fon an elbow, and savors her name like honey on her tongue. 

“Yes?”

There is nothing but sincerity in that question, no innuendos or winks, as if the woman kneeling in front of her expects nothing in return, as if she has been used meanly. Zelda leans in, meets her in a kiss that tastes of herself and asks soft against her lips—

“May I?”

And a hand reaches up, curls in her hair, does not pull or yank or direct, only holds her close. When Lilith replies it is on an exhalation, colored with the beginning of a smile.

“Yes.”

*

Sabrina is four and a hellraiser, and none of them could be any prouder. Just like Edward at that age, Zelda knows, and if their mother were still around to give her opinion, probably not unlike Zelda herself at that age, too. 

It is lovely to have her niece watch her with little furrowed brows, following along as she points out the words she reads from the Satanic bible, asking for _just one more story_ to delay being put to bed—and Zelda is happy to comply, because with Sabrina any questions about the Path of Night are less a ploy and more an inquisitive nature that will some day grow into a thirst for knowledge. 

And Hilda is pleased too, no doubt, at the little helper she has in the kitchen, even if Sabrina’s unbridled magic curdles the milk at times or swaps sugar with salt. She stomps indoors before Hilda can catch her, little boots muddy with dirt from the garden, and finds Hilda sweeping up after her with a smile. 

Ambrose has someone else to talk to, something else to do other than languish under house arrest, and many an afternoon have been spent with the two youngest Spellmans playing teleporting hide-and-seek or playing chase in the grassy yard outside. 

And Lilith is pleased with her pronunciation, her conjugation, delights in Sabrina’s rudimentary but expanding knowledge of Latin which will serve her well in the future. Her gift for tongues had been a surprise Zelda had discovered as they had gotten to know each other more intimately, beyond the sexlessness of joint caretakers and stumbling together into the realm of sexual partners--a surprise that should not have been one. Lilith knows languages Zelda herself does not, ones that died thousands of years before Zelda even learned of them. 

All in all, Sabrina brims with magic. But safeguards are in place, balance always kept, and Zelda can feel like the moment when the wind changes or the moon slips behind a cloud when something is growing quickly out of control. Where would parenting witches and warlocks be without that uncanny ability? 

It is an early autumn night, the moon new and the sky a deep black, and from the light of the flickering stars and the crackling bonfires burning for this Dark Baptism Zelda can see the proud young witch standing before the stone altar and Father Blackwood, her parents not far behind her. Attending as part of the crowd of witches and warlocks of their coven, there is Hilda and Ambrose to one side of her, dressed finely, Lilith to the other, and a heavy, drowsy toddler on her hip. 

There are few things forbidden to young wich and warlock eyes. It had been a moot point, had been no question since her arrival that Sabrina like any other witching babe was to be included in everything possible. To do so would go against uncountable years of tradition, would break a line of learning and leave her ignorant to their ancient ways, as well as necessitate one of them staying home to babysit. 

Thought late as it is, Sabrina thankfully is relatively quiet, and Faustus begins in a drone 

“We are gathered here together, in these woods, in the presence of our Dark Lord, with all the souls, the living and the dead, of our coven.”

Zelda watches but find sher mind wandering, not listening as he begins to recite the ancient speech. She chastises herself for it briefly because it is a sacred right that deserves her attention. But the circle in the grove of trees deep in the Greendale forest is familiar, safe, their kind around them and spells placed so that no mortal may wander upon them, and Zelda breathes in deeply, the scent of wet earth and plants and the sting of woodsmoke. 

It reminds her tangentially of Lilith, of something untamable and everlasting, and Zelda glances at her, at her lover’s sharp features in the firelight, at her dark, curled hair which smells always of burnt amber when she buries her nose in it after they’ve worn themselves out. She craves suddenly for contact, and so Zelda leans close, brushes Lilith’s arm and leans against her once she’s made her intentions known, Sabrina cradled between them.

A willing partner was not something hard to find, something lacking. But this—that Lilith looks at no one but her, cares after no one but Sabrina—excites her her even know, sends a frisson of pride and lust through her at the thought that they are here together, seeing and being seen by the other members of their coven once again, because is not pride in their joys and self-fulfillment part of their creed? 

“There is no law beyond _do what thou wilt_.” Faustus pauses for effect, continues with a sweep of his hand. “And so our Dark Lord asks: would you like to be happy, child, to be free?”

And suddenly, in the flicker of firelight, it might be just that—a flicker, a play of light and dark off Lilith’s features and a hardness to her shoulder that Zelda is leaning on. 

At Faustus’ words Zelda can see from the corner of her eye that Lilith holds a tension now that was not previously there, and her usual sensual pout seems twisted into a grimace. Those familiar blue eyes, filled when they are together with nothing but tenderness, now seem glacial and dangerous, colorless in the firelight. And Sabrina in her own arms, too, twitches awake with a small sigh, because in her life everything must happen all at once, and so discreetly, Zelda, hands full supporting Sabrina against her, lets her the back of her hand brush against the other woman’s arm in comfort. She does not whisper because it would be unbecoming to speak at the moment, but the small motion breaks Lilith from her trance.

“In exchange for this belief, you shall be granted powers that will enable you to be of service to the Dark Lord…”

“Let me,” Lilith offers quietly, turning to her, and so Zelda shifts Sabrina to Lilith’s arms, the burn in her muscles glad for the reprieve. That wakes her completely, and Sabrina slowly sits up on Lilith’s hip now, Lilith’s arms around her waist, and looks around blearily, takes in everything. 

They had explained the concept of the coming Dark Baptism to her earlier though Zelda was certain it had gone in one ear and out the other. At the very least the importance of staying quiet had been stressed, and so when Sabrina turns away from the ceremony and reaches towards the wood behind them, little fingers grasping at nothing, Lilith hikes her a bit higher, bows her head in close and whispers something to her that Zelda does not catch.

“... are you willing to forsake the Path of Light and follow the Path of Night wherever it may lead you?”

Before them, the young witch accepts, palm outheld and blood spilled, and as the girl takes up the pen to sign her name Zelda senses it, a subtle call to the magic within her, hears as much as feels the presence of something behind them, at the edge of the dark woods. 

She looks sharply at Sabrina, finds her niece looking into the line of trees behind them and smiling. 

It’s not a pull of magic strong enough to be of much worry—no demon will appear, no dream-eater. The forest is full of familiars, Zelda knows, and the feel of the magic of it fits the likely culprit. Sabrina claps her hands, must sense what she’s called to too, but this is neither the time nor the place no matter how objectively proud Zelda is. It would not do to interrupt another young witch’s baptism, and whatever Sabrina has called to her must wait.

It is an easy enough spell, one for banishment, and stray familiars are subservient enough. 

Zelda lets slip Latin, words a low breath as she focuses just behind the treeline. No one will notice her turned away from the rite, focused on it as they are. From her peripheral she sees Lilith’s head incline just imperceptibly towards her, given she’s turned away from one of the most important parts of the ceremony. But Zelda wards her worry and any intervention off with a slight motion of her hand. She’s no need for help and quickly enough the beast, the familiar, whatever it is, sinks back into the gloom and away from the ceremony, that pull of magic slipping away and then gone.

“What was that?” Hilda asks beside her, and Zelda had almost forgotten about her, jumps as her sister leans in close into her space as they join in clapping, applauding as a new member of their coven finally gains her full birthright. “Did you hear something behind us?”

“Just Sabrina playing,” Zelda replies. “I sent the familiar away.”

“Oh, goodness,” Hilda comments, because they _are_ attending a solumn ceremony, but she’s smiling as she says it. 

At the end of the night, a new witch is baptised—without interruption—into the Path of Night, and as Faustus concludes his ceremony and claps the girl on the back, the proud parents stand by their daughter, practically glowing as the circle around them breaks apart, as members of their coven crowd being to approach to give her their congratulations. 

“Shall we?” Lilith says, and they move forward, Hilda and Ambrose first, and then she and Lilith and Sabrina. 

And one day it will be _them_ , Zelda realizes as they settle in line to give their congratulations. It’s a concept that’s been a forgone logical conclusion since Sabrina came into their care more so than something to look forward to, up until this moment. 

Ambrose was Hilda’s charge, really, had been until they’d both arrived in Greendale, and already initiated. But Sabrina, Zelda thinks, as Lilith’s free hand settles on the small of her back, at the V of where her low-dipping dress gives way from skin to cloth. For Sabrina’s Dark Baptism, Zelda thinks, Lilith’s hand not straying as they take gradual steps forward, urging Zelda forward with her as they approach the young witch and her parents. For Sabrina's Dark Baptism, when Sabrina chooses her name and signs it into the book of the beast, it will be herself and Lilith standing behind her, smiling proudly.

After much mingling and long goodbyes, they traipse back home, through the entryway and up the stairs and to Sabrina’s room, change and put her to bed and say their goodnights to each other, and finally, well past the witching hour, Zelda shuts the door of their room behind them.

With a wave of her hand the lamps’ lights flicker on, dim and warm, and Lilith steps out of her heels with a pleasurable sigh. “She’s a powerful little thing,” Lilith remarks, reaches behind herself, the motions quiet and earnest—there’s no provocation there, and because of that it is almost provocative in itself. It is rare still for her to see Lilith completely unguarded. Lilith draws the zipper of her dress down, baring her shoulders and small of her back and then slipping out of it, turning for the closet, and despite the hour Zelda’s body demands touch with the quickness of wildfire at the sight of Lilith in nothing more than black lace. 

She’d imagined, only a few years ago, living out her life in the lap of luxury abroad—wearing furs and silk and pearls, breaking hearts left and right, and finishing the night with the ache between her thighs sated by whatever witch or warlock was in respectable distance, with a good stiff drink and a packet of cigarettes. And then, not so long ago, nothing had seemed better after Edward’s death than to sleep under the same roof as her sister and nephew and then her niece, to keep them close and in sight and wake up with nothing better to do that sit with a babe at the table and spoon a mush of vegetables into her smiling mouth. And it had been good enough, at least until Mary Wardwell had shown up on their doorstep and disrupted her life. 

At times it overcomes her, and Zelda marvels at the change in her life. She has shared her bed with the other witch for two years now and has thanked Satan for every night of it.

“Yes,” Zelda agrees absently, though she cannot help but add, “And she’ll be more so when she learns to control it after her baptism.”

With Lilith’s back to her, removing her jewelry at the armoire, she steps out of her own heels, feels the pleasant arch in her calves as she stretches and pads across cold hardwood and makes her way over, hand touching a hip at the same moment that she presses herself lighty against Lilith—room always for Lilith to move away or brush her aside with a kiss and a laugh, because if there is one thing Zelda Spellman cannot bring herself to do it is to demand of her lover, her goddess. And Lilith startles at it, midway through removing her rings and gaze surprised as she turns, but it’s followed by that hungry smile of hers as she reads Zelda’s eyes, her posture, and Lilith puts down her jewelry, reaches up.

“Why, Zelda,” Lilith says coyly, the way her hips arch up against her own, belying the game she pretends to play. Lilith’s warm hands cups her jaw, pulling her close, and Zelda acquiesces, leaning for a kiss. “It’s nearly morning.”

“Like that’s ever stopped us,” Zelda replies, and her thumb skims over Lilith’s hipbone as she nips into their kiss and pulls away.

Lilith is a skilled lover no matter how she evokes pleasure. But overwhelmingly it is a gift she bestows to Zelda, tongue working against her sinfully and fingers searching for the spot that will have her drunk and pliable for her. Tonight, though, Zelda presses a kiss to her cheek, to that spot just under her ear that has Lilith gasp, and down her neck to her clavicle to the swell of her breast, and Zelda hungers for nothing more than to be on her knees in front of her, Lilith’s fingers carded into her hair and her nails pricking at her scalp.

She urges Lilith against the nearby wall and Lilith follows, makes a delicious noise as Zelda sinks to her knees, a hand on Lilith’s hip holding her steady as the other reaches curls over the waist of her undergarments, hooking into them. She draws them down pale thighs slow, follows the trail of the fabric with kisses and bites, and by the time the undergarments are around Lilith’s ankels Lilith is stepping out of them with unbridled eagerness.

Zelda kisses her way back up, from the dip just behind her ankle to her calf, the spot behind her knee that causes her to laugh, up one thigh and then the other before shouldering Lilith’s right leg. Her mouth waters at the scent of her as she draws closer, at the soft dark hair so unlike her own bright copper or the heady taste she can never get enough of, and why deny herself? Lilith’s hands rest gently on her head, and with her free hand Zelda reaches up, hand over Lilith’s curls and lets her weave her fingers through. 

The first lick has Lilith jumping under her tongue, and so Zelda reads her, holds back, starts slow. 

She licks her way down, avoids her clitoris and focuses on her labia instead, runs her tongue through them languidly and suckles, drawing them into her mouth carefully, before dipping her tongue inside of her lover, Lilith’s flavor blooming on her palate. There is something about the use of tongue between women that surpasses the intimacy of other sexual acts, Zelda thinks, and like a cliche from one of Hilda’s horrible books Zelda moans into the motions, grasps Lilith’s hip with one hand and tigethens her hold over her thigh on the other, licks deep and drinks from her. 

She draws back only when Lilith’s hands tug at her hair, urging her up and ready _now_ , and so Zelda rises, overshoots where Lilith wants her and bites at Lilith’s hip instead. On the soft plane of her stomach is where she would lay her head down and sleep the night away if it were possible. But they end so often nestled like two spoons or, alternately, sleeping in the same bed but apart, only fingertips touching, that to do so is rare. And so Zelda takes her time, kisses from her navel down to her clitoris, and when her lips brush against her she looks up, finds her lover looking up too, away but in ecstasy, and holds still. 

“Lilith,” Zelda calls, and it draws Lilith from her pleasure. 

“Yes,” Lilith replies, looks down, and some part of Zelda smolders, clit throbbing between her legs as she keeps their eye contact, lowers her mouth and presses a kiss to her lover's clit. 

And their positions, Zelda’s motions, strike a different spark between them now, and Lilith smiles down at her benevolently.

“You’re doing so well, Zelda,” Lilith says, the hand in her hair disengaging, coming back to stroke rather than hold, and Zelda almost closes her own eyes, feels them flutter but keeps them open. “Just like that, darling.”

Lilith undulates against her, but never a selfish lover knows as well that there is delay and there is fruitless denial. “Won’t you join me?” Lilith asks not long after with a smile, and Zelda breathes out against her, grabs the side of her own dress, drags it up until she’s got enough room to slip her hand between. She sinks onto her own fingers, rides her hand, butt of her palm pressing against her clit. 

“There you go," Lilith murmurs with a small laugh, pleased. "Perfect.”

And then there are no more words after that, only Lilith’s breath hitching, the tensing of Lilith’s stomach under her hand, and the taste of Lilith filling her world.

  
  


*


	4. Chapter 4

*

She has been plagued in the months leading up to August with two worries, both equally distressing and manifesting in her dreams to prolong her tortue—for Sabrina, on her niece’s first day of mortal school, to cling to her as she did when she was a babe, wailing and refusing to be torn apart, or for her to toddle off into the schoolyard without encouragement, smiling and eager and with Hilda taking pictures for her damned photo album the entire time.

She’d been won over long before today to agree to send Sabrina to Greendale Elementary. 

“She’s going to ask to go anyway, love,” Hilda had argued, broaching the subject, and Zelda had known it was the truth. And besides, with their coven’s numbers static if not stagnant, there had been no one in Sabrina’s age range to introduce her to and let her socialize with until she’d be old enough to attend the Academy. There were only the three other orphan girls, all several years older and who had no interest in playing pretend with a _baby_. She could not deny Sabrina company her own age.

And Zelda knows now, on a blustery morning standing next to Hilda and finally letting go of Sabrina’s hand as the bell rings, that both scenarios are liable to break her heart, just in different ways. Sabrina’s little dress is a bright red, her stockings black, and her wavy hair, unruly as ever, refuses to be held back behind her ears by the bow. She waves back at them both, already a part of a gaggle of mortal children, as the teachers herd them indoors and to class.

“Have fun, my little lamb!” Hilda calls after her, still waving, and Zelda reaches out, grabs the crook of her arm to keep Hilda from accidentally following them indoors.

It couldn’t go more smoothly, objectively. No meltdowns and no crying, from Sabrina or either of them. But once Sabrina disappears into the mortal building and the doors close, schoolyard empty and quiet, Zelda turns, lets go and leaves Hilda before her sister can try to talk to her with her incessant _cheeriness_ and walks home quick enough for her calves to burn from the exertion.

Since their niece’s arrival at the ancestral Spellman residence nigh six years ago there has not been a day in her life that’s gone by without Sabrina. And so, upon storming up the front steps and into the house, Zelda summons up a packet of cigarettes, takes the stairs and shuts herself up in her bedroom as a clear indication to Hilda or Ambrose that she does _not_ want to be interrupted and smokes through the pack as she sits on their bed, tells herself it’s the sting of the veil of smoke that surrounds her that makes her eyes water and not tears. There is not even Lilith here to comfort her because the other witch has taken up her job at the mortal high school once again. 

How the house feels empty without the patter of feet running to and fro and Sabrina asking endless questions!

When the package of cigarettes is empty and the ashtray full, Zelda rises more calmly, walks over to one window and opens it, ancient wood sticking and groaning as she pushes it open before she repeats the routine with the other two windows in the room. But finally it’s done and the fresh air seeps into the room from outside, and Zelda catches her breath, turns to the mirror on her dresser and inspects her make-up. 

Sharp, but could be sharper. Zelda wonders, really wonders as she takes out her eyeliner pen and touches up the wings—and not just a passing thought of Edward and Diana on the way past their graves—of Diana for once, of the mortal woman without whom she wouldn’t be in this situation. How perverse that the tragedy of their death should give birth to one of her greatest joys. Zelda caps her pen, puts it away, and hopes, wherever Diana is and whatever she believed in, that if there’s some place she’s watching her from that Diana can see that she is taking this seriously.

The rest of the day passes as it usually does, with a stack of newspapers and a stiff drink and receiving the occasional call to the mortuary for some deceased mortal, although nearing two o’clock she begins to pace and at three o'clock on the dot she is down at the elementary school with Hilda once more, kneeling without touching the ground and arms held out wide as Sabrina jumps into them.

“Auntie Zee!” Sabrina crows and Zelda straightens, picking her up, and Sabrina wriggles in her arm, frees whatever she’s holding and then shoves a colorful, rectangular piece of paper in her face. “Look what I drew.”

Balancing her on a hip, Zelda takes it, holds the paper a little further away to get the full scope of the picture. She does not require glasses like Hilda, but neither can she see something from this up close. “It’s magnificent, darling,” she declares at the figures that she’s come to decipher from Sabrina’s other drawings—the smallest scribble is Sabrina, of course, dressed in red, and the others that surround her in various states of detail are herself, Hilda, Ambrose, and Lilith. “It’ll go right up on the refrigerator.”

“ _Ahem_ ,” Hilda grumbles, mouth scrunched in a moue, and she’s feeling charitable so Zelda only rolls her eyes at that, puts down Sabrina and lets their niece launch herself at Hilda now, giggling.

They walk home at a casual pace, Sabrina in between them and holding both of their hands as she chatters about her sharing the contents of her lunch and the monkey bars on the playground. Later, after they have dutifully placed magnets at the two top corners and secured the drawing on its place of honor on the refrigerator and listened to the long list of mortal friends Sabrina has made over the dinner Hilda’s prepared, Zelda lingers with Lilith in the kitchen after the food is gone and the table cleaned, nursing a black coffee. 

The level of comfort that they’ve come to together is relaxing. Lilith maintains her cabin, Zelda is aware vaguely, but by and large her home is here, in their shared room where she keeps her things and sleeps each night in bed with her. There is much to be said to coming home to the same warm embrace each night. It satisfies some part of her that she had thought long buried and smothered. And besides, the Church of Night is not without its marriages after all.

“It’s almost Samhain,” Lilith says, breaking the silence that’s fallen over them, and Zelda makes a noncommittal noise. The Samhain celebration of the Church of Night is raucous and not to be missed, one of if not _the_ favorite of her unholy days—fire, mulled wine, darkness, and sex. 

“Yes,” Zelda says. But despite her personal preferences, there has been an inkling forming that they should do something else this year. But she is not the only decision maker in their home and so despite what she suggests, she watches Lilith’s features for a sign of her thoughts as she proposes it, and Hilda, too, will need to be consulted.

“I think it would be best to have our own celebration,” Zelda says slowly, thinking aloud. There is a latent eroticness to their rituals unlike the false god’s repressive piety, most pronounced on the unholiest of days. But at the moment it seems neither the time nor the place for it. Now with Sabrina exploring and enjoying her duality faster than Zelda’s heart of hearts would like, a family celebration _cum_ birthday party seems appropriate. “Sabrina is, I must admit, taking to the mortal world more quickly than I would like. I think a focused celebration more suitable for her age would entertain her more than partaking on the sidelines in the coven’s usual celebrations.”

“Quite possibly,” Lilith agrees, and then tilts her head, pushes her empty cup away. “You know, you needn’t worry about her alone, Zelda. I’ll be there at Baxter High when she’s almost of age,” Lilith adds reassuringly. Despite what Zelda had initially upon their meeting dismissed as a ludicrous choice of work as a mortal high school civics teacher, she is reminded again of the wisdom in it. “Tell me what you need for our Samhain,” Lilith says, smiling in another way at the thought. “And I’ll see that it’s provided.”

Zelda smiles, grateful, and nods her head. “You’re hell-sent, darling,” she replies, means it with all of her dark heart, and reaches out and lays her hand atop of the other woman’s, and it is a comfort, a balm to her heart and pride, that she and Hilda and Lilith will in each of their own ways make sure that Sabrina knows who and what she is and ease her journey to joining the Path of Night.

*

She is a thorough and patient woman, and so as August turns slowly into September and then October she strategizes, and as Sabrina thrives at her mortal school Zelda fits her plans around those of Hilda and Ambrose’s for it will not only be Samhain but their niece’s birthday.

On the thirty-first she and Hilda collect Sabrina at school pluck her out from amongst a gaggle of ghosts and dinosaurs and robots, Sabrina bouncing with energy from too much excitement and candy already, and once at home and settled in the kitchen, the lights out, Ambrose appears in the doorway carrying a huge sheet cake on a platter. 

“Happy birthday, little cous!” Ambrose announces with a grin, Hilda and herself and Lilith around her, and as Ambrose sets it down in front of her, an orange monstrosity alit with candles dripping red wax and Sabrina’s name spelled out in dark frosting, Zelda watches with a chuckle as Sabrina’s eyes go wide as saucers.

“Can I eat it _all_?” she asks in a hushed breath. 

“What else are birthdays for,” Lilith says. 

“Do you remember,” Hilda says aloud, hand on the back of Sabrina’s chair as Ambrose begins to cut the cake. “Last year? When she grabbed a fistfull before we even cut it?”

“Got it all over her face,” Ambrose reminisces as he cuts slices, slips under them, and lays them on a place, the first one for Sabrina. “Eat up and then you and I and Auntie Hilda can go trick-or-treating.”

That gets an excited shriek that Zelda is suprise does not shatter their best crystalware, and she resists rolling her eyes at the very concept of trick-or-treating. Another foolish mortal tradition that smacks of the highest irreverence, to dress as witches when some of the families in the town date back to actual witch hunters.

But she puts her feelings aside, and after they’ve all partaken of some cake soon Sabrina is dressed appropriately for the weather and ready to go, bouncing on the halls of her feet in the hallway, cake forgotten. She is a witch, of course, dressed in stereotypical mortal assumptions of their ancient garb, a little pointed black hat and a cape, tiny broom held in her hand.

Zelda cannot help but chuckle into her drink at the thought of Sabrina knocking on mortal doors and loudly proclaiming with a five-year-old’s righteous certainty that she’s a witch. It is ingrained of course in witch and warlock children from earliest times not to speak of their ways, but on Samhain it is a trick, Lilith had explained, whispering to a giggling Sabrina earlier. A trick on the mortals, and tonight out of all nights of the year she can say it.

“Come on, Auntie Hilda!” Sabrina calls, and Zelda watches with amusement as Hilda and Ambrose don coats as well, Ambrose holding a small plastic pumpkin for her to collect candy in. 

“Be back in time for Samhain!”

The door closes behind them, and then the house is much quieter once Sabrina and Hilda and Ambrose leave.

Zelda filters back into the kitchen, picks up plates and forks and lays them in the sink before turning to the cake and exalting, “This is enough sugar to last a coven through an entire famine.”

“Children,” Lilith says simply as Zelda takes the cake and it is put away into the refrigerator. “I’m just glad I’m not supervising some insipid mortal dance. I see enough gyrating teenagers as it is.”

“Is that so, Miss Wardwell?" Zelda says, shutting the refrigerator door and turning, a brow raised as the other woman smiles wickedly, feeding off of her energy. "Do tell.”

She ends up the counter, Lilith between her thighs, and, much later, a broken teacup from their motions is the casualty that no one will ever see. Once they've collected themselves and drawn their dresses back down, Zelda sweeps the broken porcelain into the trash bin, mourns the loss of such fine china but doesn't regret a thing.

*

The circuit of homes is probably far shorter than Sabrina would like, but there is still snow on the ground from earlier and she has enough candy to satisfy her for a month, Zelda can see from the overflowing plastic pumpkin once the trio come home. 

“Just going to pack everything up,” Hilda says, hanging her coat on the rack in the entryway, and after a brief repose in which Sabrina chatters away, telling her about every sort of costume and friend she’d seen on their rounds of the local houses, Hilda reappears from the kitchen carrying a large basket, and they all don their coats and boots and head out once more.

They make their way into the beginning of the Greendale forest, staying within the boundaries of their land to accommodate Ambrose, and once they find the clearing that they’ve prepared, swept clean of stray branches and leaves, hallowed by the unlit pyre in the middle, Zelda stops and bows her head, holds out her hands.

The others fall into place, a ring, and she speaks only once they are all joined hand-in-hand.

“A circle of protection rings this grove tonight,” Zelda intones, to ward off any unexpected visitors or wandering mortals. She holds just a little tighter to Lilith’s warm hand in hers, magic recognizing what lacks a formal title. There is a flutter in her stomach always as she finishes, Lilith by her side, “And no witch save a Spellman may cross it.” 

And then they settle down, a series of spells rendering the snowy ground no bother, magically dry and not a bit cold.

Hilda digs into her basket and Lilith summons a flame to light the small bonfire they encircle, and Zelda cuts an apple into slices with a knife, hands them to Sabrina with the promise of candy _later_ as Ambrose hands out the bottles of mulled cider Hilda passes him for the rest of them indulge in. He should make it a business, Zelda thinks briefly, accepting one. To pick up the free time between embalmings. At the least it would occupy him.

“Tonight is the night on which we celebrate Samhain,” Zelda begins, though across the bonfire Hilda interrupts, leaning over to her side and dragging Sabrina into a hug. 

“And the birth of our darling Sabrina!”

“Yes. And it is the end of the harvest, the last days of summer. The cold nights wait on the other side for us,” Zelda continues after the praise has died down, because one does not become the sister of a radical high priest without learning to lead rituals, despite what Faustus now preaches. And besides, she can rest on her own laurels—the only coven member to rival her knowledge of their Satanic bible and the history of their coven is likely Faustus himself. 

“The bounty of our labor,” Zelda continues solemnly. “The abundance of the harvest, the success of the hunt, and the life of our coven all lie before us. We thank the Dark Lord for all he has given us this season, and yet we look forward to winter, a time of sacred darkness.”

There is something about winter, either the magic of it or her pure enjoyment, that seems to make her potions sweeter, her magic sharper. Just as Hilda prefers spring and Beltane, with everything that renews and grows, so she finds this time of coming darkness welcoming.

“Hear, hear,” Ambrose says, raising his bottle in a toast before taking a long pull at it, and they all repeat the motion, Sabrina holding up an apple slice. 

And so, as a time to honor the past while looking forward to the future, they settle into comfortable talk, enjoying the warmth of the bonfire and remembrance. 

“Sabrina, darling. Come here, would you?” Lilith calls, a hand outheld in a motion to come forth, and Sabrina, snack finished, Ambrose and Hilda busy discussing the content of the bottles, walks over. 

Lilith takes her hand, draws her forth and lets Sabrina plunk down on her lap. “On this night we honor the Dark Lord,” Lilith explains, picking up the thread of what Zelda had begun earlier, and with the deft twisting of twigs from the extra kindling there is soon a small man-like figure in her hands which she hands to Sabrina, head crowned with a pair of goat-like horns. “Keep this, darling, and it will welcome Him into our home.”

And Sabrina carried it throughout the night like she used to with her old teddy bear—throughout the celebration and the walk home once the witching hour has passed, sleepy and carried on Ambrose's shoulders, up until she’s put to bed, figure clutched under her arm. It can’t be comfortable given it’s made of rough pine, but her niece, young as she is, is a witch who knows her mind, and so Zelda kisses her cheek goodnight, turns out the lights, and closes the door.

She sleeps for once with Lilith in her arms rather than her in Lilith's, the other woman’s head tucked comfortably just under her chin.

  
  


*


	5. Chapter 5

*

Sabrina grows like bindweed, and before Zelda can almost comprehend it music thumps from Ambrose’s room loud enough to shake the timbers, signaling that he’s either moping or fornicating, and Sabrina and her mortal friends—Susie and Roz, whose names Zelda had refused to learn and had only done so through the most rote of Sabrina’s repetition—run through the house, chasing each other and shrieking. Wasn’t it just yesterday that Sabrina was magicking her bottle of milk across the room and learning her ABCs and falling asleep in her arms?

“Oh, sleepovers,” Hilda chuckles aloud, knitting on the sette and clearly pleased, and Zelda looks down her nose at her as someone runs by, lifts her glass of whiskey into the air to avoid it being upset and the antique carpet ruined. “Always more fun when there’s a good old storm outside, aren’t they?”

“Don’t slip on the _hardwood!”_ Zelda demands after whoever-that-was, but by the pounding of feet up the stairs it’s a warning not heeded—if Hilda has to play doctor and knit bones back together before purging a mortal memory she has no qualms about letting it happen. And she ignores her sister’s rhetorical question because _of course_ poor weather makes any situation better.

“Blood pressure,” Hilda chides gently, and Zelda lets out a noise of frustration because she’s right. Again.

“I just wish,” Zelda begins, admits what she has long given up for. There is no one but her and Hilda in the parlor, and it has been a while since they have enjoyed a moment such as this. As much as she’s made use of the Cain Pit, she’s not sure what she’d ever do without Hilda. 

“I just wish she had a few other friends as well, you know?” Zelda says, looks away to avoid meeting Hilda’s eyes. She can speak from her heart on occasion, but cannot guarantee more than that. “If only Prudence and Agatha and Dorcas weren’t so insular.” 

With the three other youngest witches in the coven just gone away to the Academy, there was no one else of witch blood left of Sabrina’s age for her to interact with. Not that the three and Sabrina had ever done so before, but she’d hoped at least now that all of them were a bit older that they’d find _something_ to talk about. But it had not come to be, and not for the first nor the last time had Zelda cursed their kind's dwindling numbers.

“She has us,” Hilda says, which is true and does bring a measure of happiness to her. Her niece, of all of her at times confusing duality, if an emotional girl, and she would be lying if she did not say the goodnight wishes or the cup of coffee prepared in the morning or the hugs goodbye are not something she enjoys. “And love,” Hilda says, a brow raised. “I don’t think they’d have been friends even if they were closer in age.”

Zelda makes a noise of affirmation, takes a sip of her drink. The sisters take their witchood seriously, no softness for mortals. Sabrina, on the other hand, is tender in a way that scares Zelda, that makes her fear for her niece’s path. And she degrades herself to chalk it up simply to Sabrina’s duality. No—she herself too has it, Zelda must admit, a softness she’s hidden away for few to have been let to witness. 

“Auntie Zee,” comes Sabrina’s suddenly voice, and Zelda looks over her shoulder, finds Sabrina leaning in through the parlor door.

“What do you want?”

“Can we get some things out of your closet?” Sabrina asks vaguely and cheerfully, as if her wide smile will have any bearing on Zelda’s answer. It always does, but she tries her damnedest not to let it show. But it shows, Lilith always says. _She’s got you wrapped around her little finger._

“Why?” Zelda asks warily. In the past she’s lost more than one item of clothing to her niece and nephew’s pilfering as young children, for dress-up or art or spellcasting, ripped by accident or lost in some other realm or cut apart and made into something else, and is not eager for it to start up again. Her closet, her clothing and jewelry, are all dear to her, and is not pride one of their unholy principles?

“We’re practicing for the school play,” Sabrina explains hopefully, and that makes up her mind. 

“And have you rip my best Channel?” Zelda says. “Absolutely not.” It earns her a pout but she holds steady.

“Fine,” Sabrina says finally, drawing the word out several syllables with typical preteen sass. “We’ll rehearse Lucifer Morningstar first, but I’ll tell Susie and Roz it’s something else. Shakespeare or something.”

It is a tempting offer. Far be it from her to stifle her niece’s interest in the Path of Night, particularly as she approaches the age of her Dark Baptism, though Zelda wonders if she should be insulted that her niece knows how to play her so well and so easily. But at thirteen perhaps it will no go as badly as before. She can only send a quick prayer to Satan on her Channel’s behalf.

“Fine. You may,” Zelda concludes. “But please, Sabrina, be _careful_.”

“We will! Love you, Aunt Zee!” Sabrina says excitedly, and suddenly Sabrina is next to her, pressing a kiss to her cheek before darting over to Hilda to repeat the motion. “You too, Auntie Hilda!”

She disappears in a flash after that, thumping up the stairs, and Zelda takes a sip of her drink, knows next year Sabrina will finally be under Lilith’s eye on a more consistent basis and this mortal nonsense done away with once and for all, she can only hope. Their grimoire has been well-used by Sabrina, though none of that guarantees that their headstrong niece will sign. 

And contrary to what her sister, her nephew, anyone else may think, it’s not simply the Spellman family name that hangs in the balance—it is the freedom and power Sabrina is _due_ , a life as a strong, powerful woman, without being ordered around by a man and, Satan forbid, a mortal man least of all. All of everything else, their standing in the coven and their piety in the eyes of Faustus and the Dark Lord, as Zelda has often ruminated on in the late hours of the night, matters not if push comes to shove. She’s known since Diana placed Sabrina in her arms the first time all those years ago that nothing else mattered except her niece. 

“Who do you think’s going to play Lucifer?” Hilda asks, and it takes a moment for Zelda to come back to herself, to shake her head lightly in sheer amazement at her sister. 

“ _That’s_ what you took away from this? Honestly, Hilda.”

Hilda shrugs, eyes wide as she grumbles an apology, and faint shrieks of what Zelda can only guess are joy at the news of her borrowed clothing come from upstairs. 

*

Thankfully their home is large enough for a full house to be of almost no problem. Past the witching hour there is the occasional giggle and patter of feet on the landing, no doubt Sabrina and her friends on their way to raid the kitchen. But other than that it is easy enough for herself and Lilith to retire to their room in peace despite the untamed abundance of youthful energy in the home.

She settles under velvet-colored sheets, her slip like silk against her, and the movement of the fabric against her skin, tantalizing, has her looking to her side with something other than mere love. 

  
They have been together all this time and yet it does not surprise her. Sitting besides Lilith who is reading quietly, immersed, Zelda wonders if the moon must be full or the stars crossed without her notice, and in a rare mood, a rush of lust washes over her, scours thought away as quick as they came, because to unholy hell with trivial things when they have each other, when they have Sabrina who is almost a daughter to them, and she turns, reaches out, draws Lilith to her, glories in the way Lilith’s blue eyes widen in unguarded happiness before fluttering closed as Zelda kisses her.

It turns to slow and heated kissing, to Lilith’s hands slipping down her backside and grasping at her ass, pulling her closer, to breath deeping and a hint of teeth appearing, and when they break away Zelda is in her lap, straddling her. 

“And what may I thank for this sudden turn of mood?” Lilith asks. Her hands play on Zelda’s hips.

“I love you.” It’s rarely said, better shown than repeated. 

“And I, you,” Lilith returns, a hand reaching up, a finger curling a lock of copper hair around it before tugging lightly, and Zelda swallows.

“Show me.” It’s a challenge for the bedroom and no further. Lilith shows her every day in the touch of her hand on her shoulder, a drink poured, Sabrina nurtured. And with it Lilith grins, the kind that shows sharp eye-teeth. 

“Show you, my darling Zelda? It would be my pleasure.” 

And then Zelda is cradled and shifted, finds herself on her back now and Lilith is above her and pleasure trills through her before Lilith slips off of her. 

Lilith strips, slowly and making a show of it, eyes downcast thugh she moves with confidence before she disappears, now nude, into their large walk-in closet, and Zelda feels a sudden, wild tug deep within herself, clenching as Lilith reappears.

Aides have existed for as long as sex itself has, and once Lilith is back above her Zelda lets her fingers dance along the edge of the leather along Lilith’s hips, pulls her closer. The glass of the thing between her thighs is warm already despite its lack of use—Lilith’s doing, no doubt.

“Take me,” Zelda whispers, ignores the cutting need in her own voice out of pride, and there’s a touch to her hip because Lilith _knows_ her, and Zelda turns, arches up against her dark-haired lover as she settles on her hands and knees and Lilith's hands settle on her hips before pulling her close, turgid against her, whispering sweet nothings and stroking her to slick readiness before taking her. 

*

There is a knock at her bedroom that startles her to wakefulness, the stubborn turn and rattle of the doorknob. Zelda opens her eyes, bleary and half-conscious, can see that the sun is just starting to stream in through the windows and _for Satan’s sake_ , what time is it? There is another rattle of the doorknob, locked, and from the other side of the door Sabrina can be heard.

“Aunt Zelda! Aunt Lilith! Make yourselves decent and open up. Aunt Hilda says brunch is ready.”

“What time is it?” Lilith murmurs, close by.

Zelda groans and presses back against Lilith behind her, meaning to disengage and sit up, but instead gasps at the sensation. She’s fallen asleep with Lilith inside her, Zelda realizes quite suddenly, Lilith’s arm over her waist and hand curled possessively over her breast left, nose pressed to the back of her neck. 

“I’m not sure,” Zelda admits a bit breathlessly. “Too damn early.”

The night’s passion is remembered with a pique of lust, and she cannot help but roll her hips back, a mother’s awareness of her charge not far away but her body demanding. But Lilith's hand drags away, and Zelda nearly whimpers as the hand stops at her hips, stilling them. 

Zelda has found that in matters of sex there is little Lilith is willing to share with others. It is not part of being a jealous lover—rather, in a moment of bared emotions, Lilith had admitted that to have so many know so much about oneself, or to _think_ they know, has left her craving a privacy long denied her. 

And so Zelda cannot deny her lover this privacy and she sighs as Lilith withdraws. Zelda turns over, watches Lilith push herself up onto her elbows, brown hair a violently beautiful mane around her as she blinks. She is bare, as they usually are in bed, hence the locked door, and a part of Zelda aches quite suddenly to reach out, to take Lilith’s breast in her hand and tease a nipple between her fingertips, to urge her in for a kiss and wish her a very good morning, attempt to urge her back to her warm embrace. 

But Sabrina knocks again at the door, sing-songs _Auntie Zeee!,_ and so Zelda rolls over, away from Lilith and trying to tamp down the hunger in her, and slips from the bed. “But it doesn’t matter what time it is. You know Sabrina. She won’t give up until we’re up.”

“So quick to leave our bed," Lilith jests, smirking though she elegantly undoes the buckles of the harness with one hand. "I’m beginning to doubt my prowess. How many times did I bring you to the heights of pleasure last night, Zelda? Was it nine or ten?”

“You enchant me and you know it," Zelda says shamelessly, slipping from their bed and taking her robe in hand. "But I have a mortuary to run and no doubt _you_ have papers to grade.”

Lilith groans deeply before sitting up. “Don’t remind me about flippant mortal essays about the importance of checks and balances.”

“You’re the one who chose that line of work,” Zelda says with a kiss, drawing a robe over herself and tying it before sweeping out the door.

Downstairs, Hilda bustles in the kitchen, friends apparently fed and sent off and Sabrina now doing neglected homework before school tomorrow. Zelda settles at the table with a cup of coffee, watches Sabrina frowning in concentration and listens to Hilda humming some tune under her breath. When she finally does descend, Lilith's entrance is par for the course. 

“How is your homework coming along?” Lilith asks grandly as she enters hte kitchen, draws her robe closer around herself, though it’s a low-cut thing and the action does almost nothing to cover her body—something everyone in the Spellman home except herself has become used to and has seemed to filter out from everyday observation.

“Fine, Aunt Lilith," Sabrina replies, looking up. "Although I do have a question on this one page on demonology.”

“Well, you’re asking the right person,” Lilith says, a hint of amusement in the lilt of her voice, and it strikes Zelda as it has before, of course, that Sabrina is half-mortal. But as she sits with Lilith at the table, that is something Lilith and Sabrina share that she does not, witch through and through, to be of a spirit that straddles two planes, and she is happy at least that there is someone there for Sabrina who understands. “Now let me see what you’ve got.”

  
  


*


	6. Chapter 6

*

The morning is a cold and brumous one, last night’s rain just finally cleared and the pale sun just breaking over the horizon through lingering clouds. Zelda can imagine the forests just outside their home, the tall trees almost humbling in size, the mist clinging to them, the meadow cleared. 

More so than any other morning lately, this one and the promise of what is to come soon has her feeling like a young witch again. Hilda behind her is sniffling as she helps her button up the back of her dress, which she can very well do on her own but that Hilda has insisted on helping her with because _it’s your wedding day for Satan’s sake, Zelda!_

“It’s not a wedding,” Zelda repeats once again, can _feel_ Hilda repeating the word excitedly to herself in her head though she says nothing.

“Oh, love,” Hilda says nevertheless, voice wobbling and close to a sob as she pats her shoulder, universal sign for all done, and Zelda runs hands down her stomach, stopping on her waist as she turns around. “Oh, come on in and stop skulking about, you two,” Hilda calls over her shoulder, eyes brimming with tears. “She’s decent.”

“Do I look alright?” Zelda asks, because even if it is not a wedding she is allowed to be nervous, and Ambrose and Sabrina’s faces appear in the now-opened doorway, the two of them fairly bursting into smiles as they clamber into the room, particularly Sabrina. All this unchecked emotion makes Zelda feel ridiculous, but not the kind of ridiculous that is so often accompanied by shame.

“You look beautiful, Auntie Zee,” Ambrose says.

“You sure we can’t come with you?” Sabrina asks, eyes shining and hands clasped in front of herself, head over heels with the idea of love and whatever else goes on in an almost-fifteen-year-old’s head. But despite the attraction of the idea of her family witnessing such an important event in her life, there is Lilith’s request, one of the very few requests the demoness has ever made over the course of their relationship, and Zelda cannot deny her that, least of all not on this day. 

“Thank you all, but I’ll be back soon enough,” Zelda says, and no one pouts or cries because they all, even Sabrina, must know by know that she is a woman of her word. “It’s something that we’ve decided to make all the more important by keeping it to ourselves, although I do appreciate your happiness on our part and your help.”

“You do you, Auntie,” Ambrose says cheekily.

With a last few well wishes and surely with Sabrina’s nose pressed to the cold windowpane of front door staring after her once she’s closed it behind herself, Zelda lets herself out of the house, down the rough wooden steps and onto the grass. 

Gravel of the driveway crunching underfoot, Zelda takes off. The meadow between their home and the woods is damp and dewy, but no cold can be felt—not today. 

She walks across that big and empty meadow and into the woods, on a little-tread path and amongst a quiet, calm silence in the heavy density of trees. Zelda thinks back on the instructions, on the cryptic line Lilith had given her before slipping away, to close one’s eyes and open one’s heart. It had been surprisingly romantic.

And so now, in the thick of the woods, Zelda pauses amongst the trees, breathes, closes her eyes, and feeling quite foolish tries to listen.

But it’s clear that, after several minutes of nothing happening, of no more than the typical sounds of the forest, that Zelda opens her eyes and realizes it’s metaphorical. There is no loud call from her lover or sounds magic.

Instead, before her where that was not one before there is now a clearing that, once Zelda steps inside and out from the trees, is made from powerfully-cast magic, stronger so than even _none but a Spellman may enter_. 

At the center of the clearing is a ring of slim candles, of graduating height with the smallests beginning at the opening, rising in height, unmelting, and culminating the tallest behind Lilith, where she waits for her near a stone altar.

“What took you so long?” Lilith fairly drawls with a smile, and Zelda only smiles. 

“Your ridiculous instructions. Have you been standing there watching me the entire time?”

“Possibly,” Lilith smiles and Zelda steps forward, through blades of wet grass that tickle her ankles but do not bother her, until she stands in front of her beloved, eye to eye, Lilith’s hands in hers. There is no high priest, no fire and brimstone, and no fear like Faustus’ sermons—only the calm of the woods, of two of them together, alone.

“You look lovely,” Zelda breathes. The deep ruby dress is not one she’s seen before, black-beaded and fit for a queen. It compliments her own, a dark red thing with black tulle at the shoulders that she had described once long ago, a dream thought up for some coven’s occasion. Just like Lilith to have remembered it and left it to her the night before, especially for today.

“As do you,” Lilith replies, and Zelda bows her head, composes herself for a moment, and frees a hand to motion towards the cord on the altar. It is a finely woven thing, she can see, simple in looks but of excellent quality. 

“Shall I?”

“Please.”

And so, without further ado, Zelda drapes the cord around their hands, enough to leave a loop on one side.

“As this knot is tied, so are our lives now bound,” Zelda begins, though their lives have been bound for the past thirteen unholy years. The two ends of the cord are dropped over and through the loop, tightening in a loose knot over their wrists just the slightest bit, comfortably close. 

“With the fashioning of this knot we tie all the desires, dreams, love, and happiness wished here in this place to our lives,” Zelda says. “And in the joining of hands and the fashion of a knot, so are our lives now bound one to another. May this knot remain tied for as long as love shall last.”

They had refused the thought of a wedding with the Church of Night from the outset for various reasons. Ideological and semantic reasons, a disinclination to comply with current hierarchy, the Dark Lord’s jealousy. Here in this guarded clearing, Zelda can feel, what they are doing is instead a private promise to share lives, to commit to each other, rather than a public contract to own another’s body. The knot is to be untied together should the decision ever come to be. 

Her love, her light, her Lilith does not look cornered, trapped, Zelda thinks, watching her before continuing—only relaxed and beautiful.

“May this cord draw our hands together in love, never to be used in anger. May the vows we have spoken never grow bitter in our mouths,” Zelda continues. “Two entwined in love, bound by commitment and fear, sadness and joy, by hardship and victory, anger and reconciliation, all of which brings strength to this union. Let us hold tight to one another through both good times and bad, and watch as our strength grows.”

She is finished and takes a step towards Lilith, who meets her. It culminates in a kiss, hands still clasped, a kiss more tender than she would have expected for the moment but no less fitting than she had imagined. 

There is nothing else in the clearing that suggests anything other than the ceremony should take place, but emotion rises up in her and Zelda asks, “Must we leave so quickly?”

“No,” Lilith agrees, of same mind and a hand guiding her, and Zelda smiles. Despite the length of their time together their passion has not once waned. 

The damp and coolness of the ground does nothing to spoil the moment. In fact, it heightens it—Zelda lies back, the grass a soft bed of its own making, the dawn light fitting the mood. It has been a long time since she’s communed with nature so. 

Their dresses and lingerie are shed at a modest pace. The mood this early morning is a slow one, and Zelda slides a hand up the side of Lilith’s thigh, enjoying the motion as Lilith’s mouth works slowly down her neck to her collarbone, leaving her mark, their bodies meeting warm in between. 

By the time their centers meet—Lilith bare and proud and beautiful above her, hands holding her to facilitate the position and Zelda arching to meet her—Zelda can feel her orgasm approaching. A fitting one this time. Not fast and hard but a slow, gradual build-up, one that shivers up her body with promise and, when it finally comes, washes over her in a slow, warm wave that has her gasping in prolonged pleasure, heightened only by the sounds of her wife following her, of Lilith sagging into Zelda’s arms and gasping, too. 

*

She attends to Lady Blackwood, consults her oldest and most powerful books and histories. Lady Blackwood’s is a troubled pregnancy already. 

“Please, rest,” Zelda advises the other woman as she leaves, never more serious, and she says a hex of protection as the other woman walks out the mortuary doors. 

But upstairs, as usual, the mood is far different.

“Aunt Hilda, which looks best?” Zelda hears Sabrina asks as Zelda enters the kitchen for a cup of tea with a little something else in it. The meeting has left her stressed on multiple levels—on a personal level, the worry of ensuring that Lady Blackwood carries her witch or warlock to term as complication-free as possible, and on a professional level that Faustus has charged her specifically, publicly, with the success or failure of this pregnancy.

“Oh, the left,” Ambrose says, and Zelda holds her tongue as she prepares her cup.

“I think I agree.”

“Harvey likes the right...”

Despite the impending Dark Baptism, there is still the matter of the mortal boy, as there has been for the past few years. The kettle whistles quickly enough and Zelda pours herself the tea, lets it steep before adding a few drops of something stronger. The dual path Sabrina seems to have chosen will be difficult, but to have tasted their life and then refuse it, to have been given gifts only to have them fade to nothing without baptism? Despite Harvey's persistence in Sabrina's life, Zelda knows she can rest easy, Sabrina already having admitted to her that _that_ path, the mortal one, does not interest her, and Zelda praises Satan for that at least.

“I remember the week before my Dark Baptism,” Zelda says, turning to join the conversation and raising the cup of tea dramatically, takes a sip before continuing to ensure that everyone is listening. “It felt as if my real life were finally beginning. I barely slept.”

Despite the admitted rarity of the situation, it is in their founding principles that such a coupling should be no different from any other within their church. Their path is not one to discrimination. As Sabrina’s primary caretakers, she and Lilith will each take the title of Night Mother, and the thought of it sparks a happy warmth in Zelda that owes nothing to the tea. 

“What about your baptismal name?” Hilda asks, speaking up. “Have you settled on one yet?”

“I have, as a matter of fact. Edwina Diana,” Sabrina announces, sitting down at the table, dresses left draped over the back of an empty chair, and once she’s settled that black cat moves like a shadow, appears on her lap and starts to purr, rusty and uneven, as Sabrina strokes along the back of her new familiar. Zelda rolls her eyes at that, almost wants to tell Sabrina familiars do _not_ belong at the table, but the giddy mood that infuses the house is inescapable--she only ignores the black cat. “Edwina, which is almost Edward, to honor my father,” Sabrina explains. “And Diana, to honor my mother. And not just to honor them, but to be closer to them. To have them with me as I walk the Path of Night.”

“Lovely,” Hilda says, voice wobbling with emotion, and Zelda, too, gives her assent in a small, proud nod. 

*


	7. Chapter 7

*

It takes time, takes much trial and error and self-flagellation and wondering what she’s done wrong for Sabrina to have run from her Dark Baptism, to have been the catalyst for so many things to have gone awry since that night. 

Is there somewhere she’s failed her, Zelda asks herself repeatedly, with each new trouble Sabrina gets herself into. Is there somewhere that she has not set a good enough example? Somewhere that she has not shown Sabrina the right and true path, empowered her to take what is hers by birth?

But eventually, exhausted, the coven in shambles, cradling Sabrina safe to her, nose to the crown of Sabrina’s head and breathing in her scent like she did when her niece was a wee babe, Zelda feels relief overwhelm her at the knowledge that it is all finally _over_ , as Sabrina hugs her close, and amidst it all there is a swell of pride that rises up in her heart at the powerful and kind young witch Sabrina has become.

_She just never listens_ , Hilda had said, just like Edward, and holding Sabrina close Zelda praises the Mother of Demons for that. 

*


End file.
